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Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-86594-4 - Transatlantic Encounters: American Indians in Britain, 1500-1776 Alden T. Vaughan Excerpt More information 1 New World Exotics [An Inuit captive] was such a wonder onto the whole city [of London] and to the rest of the realm that heard of yt as seemed never to have happened...to any man’s knowledge. (Michael Lok, 15761) Londoners gaped in October 1576 at the man brought home by Captain Martin Frobisher from Baffin Island in northeastern Canada. The first New World native to reach England in more than forty years – probably the fifth overall – survived for barely a fortnight and never left London, yet to English people far and wide “this strange Infidel, whose like was never seen, red, nor harde of before, and whose language was neyther knowne nor understoode” was, according to the imperial promoter Michael Lok, the talk of the realm. The wondrous stranger inspired Frobisher in 1577 to abduct three more Americans – a man, a woman, and a child – on his second trip to Baffin Island.2 Frobisher had no intention of capturing American natives when he launched his first expedition in 1576, aiming to bypass North America for the riches of Asia. His employer, the newly formed Cathay Company, provided ships and supplies; Michael Lok and others invested money; the mathematician and reputed “wizard,” John Dee, contributed important geographic and navigational information. Frobisher contributed experi- ence. He had explored West Africa, fought in Ireland, been imprisoned in Portugal, plundered French and Spanish ships – even, at least once, an English ship, which earned him a brief incarceration in Marshalsea prison.3 Though Frobisher’s mission in 1576 was to find the elusive Northwest Passage, this fearless, sometimes reckless, often insensitive 1 © Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-86594-4 - Transatlantic Encounters: American Indians in Britain, 1500-1776 Alden T.
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